This invention relates generally to the article handling art and, more particularly, to an article pick-up and transfer assembly for delivering articles one at a time to an article feed conveyor.
Various machines have been devised for removing a single article from a group or stack of articles and delivering such articles one at a time to an automated feed conveyor so as to avoid the tedious and monotonous chore of manually placing articles on the feed conveyor as space is made available thereon. For example, in an automated baking operation, machines have been developed for removing a single baking pan or tray from a stack of trays and delivering such tray to an automatic tray feeding conveyor leading to a tray filling station. While such known machines have eliminated the labor forces otherwise required for manually feeding trays onto the automated conveyor system, they have not been entirely satisfactory. For example, these known devices employ a plurality of mechanical fingers engagable beneath the tray for lifting such trays one at a time from the stack. However, should one or more fingers become slightly misaligned, as often occurs during usage, or somewhat worn, they cannot perform their intended function properly and often pick up more than one tray or drop a tray while in transit. This, of course, interrupts not only the tray pick-up and transfer operation but also the subsequent operations of the automated tray feeding conveyor and operations downstream of the tray feeding conveyor.